The twentieth century has witnessed a dramatic reduction in the working hours for the laboring classes with shorter work days and longer vacations providing an increasing amount of leisure time. With this development has come the increased popularity of sunbathing at private or public swimming pools and on ocean beaches. Although moderate exposure of the body to solar radiation is healthful and has been found to increase the production of vitamin D in the skin, excessive exposure to solar radiation has been found to contribute to unhealthful skin conditions such as premature aging of the skin and a higher incidence of melanoma or skin cancer. Thus it becomes important to be able to control the amount of solar radiation incident on one's skin while relaxing on the beach during one's leasure time. Conventional, umbrella-type parasols have been employed as a means to shade the body during a beach outing, however these devices have proven to be cumbersome and inconvenient to adjust as the sun progresses across the sky during the course of the day. Smaller sized, ground supported shades having adjustable canopies have been employed in the prior art but have proven to be inflexible since the user may, during one portion of the day, desire to lie upon the beach sand, while during another portion of the day would prefer to sit in a beach chair. The prior art ground supported canopies are not adaptable to use on a beach chair and either a separate parasol must be employed to provide shade or the bather must use the chair without shade.